Transgender Day of Remembrance to be held in Long Beach

Friends and loved ones of Yazmin Vash Payne, who was fatally stabbed in her Van Nuys apartment on Jan. 31, 2015, attend a vigil on Feb. 1, 2015, outside her apartment. In December 2016, Vash Payne’s boyfriend was sentenced to more than 10 years in state prison for her murder and setting their apartment on fire. Photo: Facebook.

Ramirez allegedly stabbed Gutierrez and set her residence, an apartment in the 1700 block of South New Hampshire Avenue in the Pico-Union area, on fire during the morning of Jan. 10, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance took place in 1999 to honor transgender murder victim Rita Hester, a 34-year-old African American woman was found killed inside her apartment in Allston, Massachusetts.

Hester’s case has yet to be solved.

Last week, during Transgender Awareness Week, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved creating a policy that will recognize employee’ preferred names and pronouns.

About the author

Phillip Zonkel

Award-winning journalist Phillip Zonkel spent 17 years at Long Beach's Press-Telegram, where he was the first reporter in the paper's history to have a beat covering the city's vibrant LGBTQ. He also created and ran the popular and innovative LGBTQ news blog, Out in the 562.

He won two awards and received a nomination for his reporting on the local LGBTQ community, including a two-part investigation that exposed anti-gay bullying of local high school students and the school districts' failure to implement state mandated protections for LGBTQ students.